Critque wanted

[pwrlogic]

Hey y'all.
I'm looking for some critique of my use of the hv20.
I'd like to get as much of as i can out of this camera.
Please check out my little music promo and tell me where i went wrong or what i could have done better. If you are a just looking to be mean and evil don't bother i need real constructive critiques.
I used the camera in widescreen 1080 portrait mode. no lights and the sun was just starting to go down. i edited with FCE and used the stock FCE color correction. I don't know it just does not look slick enough for me. do you think cinema mode would have been better or maybe close up shots. thanks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7gPS9pS4rI

[twoneil]

I think CInemode is better because I don't get that HDV compression artifacts.
The exposure is right, and it minimizes grains. It tries to keep the fstop low and the shutter at 48

Now I use it all the time.

[pwrlogic]

Yeah but does'nt cinema mode need more light.
We were shooting outside at dusk.
Thanks.

[twoneil]

When there is too much light it actually lowers the exposure so nothing would be overexposed. When there is little light, it does everything to keep it bright except add more grains (and that's a great exception).

I prefer to use it because it brightens the shadows, darkens the highlights and you get an evenly lit scene that could be tweaked in post production.
That is my observation, nothing technical really.

And it's doing everything automatic to my favor.

....and yeah, it eliminates the dreaded HDV compression artifacts. Big time.

[MicheleW]

Hi - I think it was very good - color, lighting, etc. My only suggestion would be to turn the music down a hair - so it doesn't compete so much with what the artists are saying. Bring it up in the beginning, then down some when they are speaking, then up again. It gives more variety to the the segment.

BTW - love the tease of Lonely Girl ... nice song.

Isn't dusk one of the best times to shoot. Don't they call that the twilight hour of filming where you can get your best light without shadows.

[Richard Bock]

I liked it! good use of music and spoken word. i would use a little less 'head room' bring your camera down a little so that there is a little less space between the top of the head and the top of the frame. Also the first guy who appears is good, but it looks as if there is a camera bag or a backpack in the frame. for a pro look, be conscious of what is in your frame. the sound is excellent, the color excellent. i'm am not so fond of the font style at the end. I would choose something a little more 'classic'. just my opinion. hope that helps

[Michael Davis]

Isn't dusk one of the best times to shoot. Don't they call that the twilight hour of filmingIt's actually called the "magic hour" (or the "golden hour" due to the golden glow the low sun provides) Michele because it's the time of day you can get a shot that has enough natural light for film to properly develop, but prevents overexposure since most of the light is being diffused. In the middle of the day the direct sunlight can be too intense for photographing certain things.


you can get your best light without shadows
Shadows are actually quite pronounced at this time due to the angle of the sun's light.

[CJDaniels]

I like the music, I agree a little loud, while listening to the dialog. I also would put some movement in the frame such as a slow zoom to overcome the static feeling and distant feeling, especially in the far shot.

It needs more cuts, angles and flow. You can do this with mulitple cameras or one camera and multiple takes.

[tcindie]

Not only was the music too loud, but the entire audio mix was a bit higher than it should be.. you could probably drop the whole mix a good 1-3 db and it would sound better.. But yes, compared to the level of speaking, the music was much too high. Drop it by a good 5-10db and you should be set.

As for the look, everything looked a bit overexposed to me. You could have stopped down a half or full stop and it would probably have helped. Also for darker skin it's nice to bounce in some fill with a gold reflector, it warms the skin tone up a bit and is always a pleasing look on darker complexions.

Also, given that you had plenty of room to work with, backing the camera up a good 15-20 feet from the talent and zooming in to the framing you want on them will help separate the background a bit. It will also give you a shallower depth of field, so the background can be a bit more soft focus, which will really help the person pop, and keeps the viewers eye trained exactly on the subject.

You might also consider slightly different framing, perfectly centered may be good for the 5 o'clock news, but it's not terribly interesting or aesthetically pleasing. The HV20 has a nice feature that gives you grid lines of thirds of the screen, centering on one of the intersections of the horizontal and vertical lines is an easy way to get a nicely composed image.

I don't necessarily think this needs more cuts, but it might be nice to see a cutaway to some live footage though it's not strictly necessary.

As far as color correction goes, the general rule of thumb is that if you have fairly evenly exposed footage (not a huge difference between light and shadow, though still perceptible) it will give you the most options for color correcting.

One of the reasons magic hour looks so pleasing is the interesting mix of color it provides.. highlights tend to skew more red/orange, and the shadows tend to skew more blue. And yes, shadows are quite pronounced during magic hour, this is when you can be standing on the sidewalk and have a shadow that is 3-4 times "taller" than you are.

Anyway.. hope that helped some.

[kevinmeyer]

as a general guide line, if you got good sound have the voice track at about -12b and any music while there is dialog at about -18db

[Michael Davis]

WHere did you get that guideline from? You want your voices to peak at as close to -0.1 as possible for the best signal to noise ratio.

[tcindie]

-12 and -18 would be normalization levels, not straight decibel levels... But -12 does seem a bit low.. I'd normalize speech to more like a -6.. peaks would still approach 0, but the overall median level would hover around whatever that normalization level is.

[Michael Davis]

When you normalize something, you're setting the peaks of the audio to the normalization value you choose, and everything else get's adjusted accordingly.

If you have a clip of audio that has an average volume of -10, with peaks of -2, and you normalize to 0, the peaks will move up to 0 and everything else will move up 2 dB, for an average of -8. If you normalize your speech to -6, at it's loudest it will be -6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_normalization

[kevinmeyer]

have a look at www microfilmmaker.com

a great site

this is where i read about the various levels, and this was one persons take on how they like to do the mix...

http://www.microfilmmaker.com/tipstrick/Issue5/soundmix.html

[tcindie]

When you normalize something, you're setting the peaks of the audio to the normalization value you choose, and everything else get's adjusted accordingly.
Not to obfuscate the issue, but that would of course depend on whether you're normalizing based on peak value or RMS value. Which I'm sure you know.

I generally go for RMS based normalization, it just feels like the audio sounds fuller that way to me.